UX Research for Sharing Creative Work and Building Community
Client overview
The Serious Type is a non-profit that aims to uplift creatives through the power of community and authentic expression. The platform provides users a space to find collaborators, cultivate community with other creatives, and share both in progress and finished projects with their audience.
Duration: 10 week project
Tools: Zoom, Notion, Figma, BallparkHQ, Excel
Team: 6 UX Researchers, 1 product manager, 4 designers, 2 content writers, 2 developers
Methods: Competitive analysis, In-depth interviews, experience mapping, concept test, usability test
My Role & Responsibilities
I was a Co-Lead UX Researcher on a team of 6 researchers. I was responsible for leading the project which included managing the team and participating in the research process at every step. I was particularly responsible for creating a research repository, conducting interviews and usability tests, analyzing the data and presenting the findings to stakeholders.
Understand what community means to artists and why it is important to them
02
Discover user motivation, needs and paint points when sharing work online
03
The 8 week project was divided into two parts. We began the project by conducting discovery research to explore and define the problem space further and better understand our target users . In week 5, we transitioned into evaluative research to measure and validate the research informed design solutions.
⦿ Stakeholder Interviews
What do we know?
Findings
The competitive analysis revealed that all platforms offered content moderation. Some platforms focused on facilitating collaboration and a few offered some sort of community engagement but none offered every feature we looked at, so there was opportunity for a new platform to fill that need.
Method 01: Competitive Analysis
Understanding the Competition
We began our research by conducting a competitive analysis to better understand the competitive landscape and what key features are offered. We identified a set of 5 websites and evaluated both their strengths and weaknesses to see what they were doing well and where we could fill a gap in the market.
| DEVIANT ART | HITRECORD | PATAGONIA ACTION WORKS | CREATIVE CARBON | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Content Moderation | post-moderation | pre-moderation | pre-moderation | pre-moderation |
| Community Engagement | Comment, Like, Follow | Comment, Like | None | None |
| Content Focus | Finished work | Work in progress | Not applicable | Finished work |
| Collaboration Offering | None | Can “remix” others work | Opportunities page for volunteers | Opportunities page for collabs; |
| Discussion Facilitation | Forums | None |
As an artist, our client had BOLD ideas and it was our job to gather all the background information so we could better understand the needs and paint points from her perspective. Additionally, we needed to make sure the team was aligned on the stakeholders goals and overall vision for the product.
The Challenge
01
The Serious Type was originally built with an adolescent user in mind but stakeholders decided to pivot and instead create a platform for an adult audience. This change meant all the previous research was now invalid and we needed to explore and re-define the problem space with this new user in mind.
Adult artists wants to be able to share their work and find potential collaborators on one platform. We want to better understand how artists currently feel about sharing their work and finding collaborators in order to uncover their needs, goals and pain points.
⦿ Roadmap
Where are we going?
Discover how artists currently share their work and how they feel about the experience
Process
⦿ Research Goals
What needs answered?
Method 02: Interviews
Discovering User Needs
Analysis
Once the interviews were done we began coding the interviews using pre-determined tags. Next, we did an analysis workshop and clustering the coded text into potential themes using affinity mapping. We then evaluated the themes to determine what insights were most relevant and useful for the team.
Findings
We prioritized findings based on how relevant they were to our research question and how frequent the theme was across participants. The top insights were then reframed into how might we statements for the design team to use for ideation sessions.
We conducted 5 in depth remote interviews with artists who share their work online. The interviews took place over 1 week with both an interviewer and notetaker present. We wanted to hear what people thought about sharing their work so we could better understand their underlying motivations.
🫣 Vulnerability
Sharing work that is in progress online is personally vulnerable and risky to artists.
💡 How Might We give artists a sense of agency to feel safe when sharing their work?
🗣️ Feedback
Artists share their work in progress in order to receive feedback from trusted sources.
💡 How Might We make asking for feedback an enjoyable experience?
👯♂️ Community
Collaborating on projects with other artists is a way to build community.
▶︎
▶︎
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💡 How Might We facilitate building a network of artistic connections?
Findings
Although users were able to easily upload a new project, they struggled with trying to add an update to the project. In addition, users also had difficulty finding where to add a new collaborator to a project.
Findings
Concept testing revealed that users wanted more control on who can provide feedback. The open to feedback tag was seen as very useful if it was coming from a trusted source. We also found that that the lack of consistent terminology across the platform used left users confused and questioning if the terms represented the same thing.
🔍 Concept test questions excerpt:
(Once on page) What do you think you could do here?
Before you click into Feed, what would you expect to see?
Thinking about your own work, how might you use this feature?
Analysis
We analyzed the data by indicating whether or not the participant correctly understood the intention of the page in addition to whether they found the feature useful. We used a rainbow chart and found patterns emerge across participants. We then prioritized the findings to identify the most important design issues that came up during the tests.
Analysis
We used a rainbow chart to record every issue a user encountered and marked down when the same issue occurred with another user. Next, we ranked the issues by severity and impact and then shared the most relevant and actionable insights with the design team.
Usability Tasks
Task 1: It’s time for you to create a new account. You are looking for collaborators and want to make sure people can contact you if they are interested in working with you on the project. Please walk me through the steps you would take to sign up for an account.
Task 5: You’ve made substantial progress on your film and want to share updates with your audience that has been following along on the platform. Show us how you would create a project update that the public can view. You want to include a title, photo and short description.
Method 03: Concept Testing
Validating Design Decisions
Using our research and competitive analysis insights, the design team created a low fidelity prototype. In order to validate the design decisions, we needed to get feedback from our users. We decided to do concept testing and conducted four tests with target users.
Method 04: Moderated Usability Testing
Evaluating Effectiveness
With the user feedback from concept testing in mind, design made iterations on the mid-fidelity prototype. We then conducted a usability test on the prototype to evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of the new user flow. We conducted six moderated usability tests and asked users to complete five key tasks related to signing up, creating a new project and navigating the project page.
Old
New
Old
New
Old
New
05 Stakeholder reception
Research buy-in!
The biggest impact we had was on the stakeholders change of tone towards research. Once she heard quotes from actual users and saw the problems they ran into on the platform, she was suckered in. Being able to see how the research impacted the designs was very valuable for them.
New
01 UX Writing
Clarifying Language
Users were confused about the intented purpose of two of the sections. Content updated the language to reduce confusion and make it easier for users to understand.
02 Re-design
Updating UI Elements
Users tried to edit the project in the sidebar. Design changed the composition and the UI to clearly distinguish these pages and actions as separate from the project page.
03 Feature added
Add a Collaborator
Users did not know how to add a collaborator. Design removed the edit action and added a button to the main page under the collaborators section to make it more intuitive.
04 Feature added
Confirmation notification
Users did not get confirmation when they completed a process which left them confused. Design created toast notifications to provide users with feedback. This eliminates confusion and lets the user know they have completed the intended goal.
Outcome
Research Impact
User informed design
Using the feedback from the usability testing, design made many iterations to the final MVP in order to make a more user centered platform. Below are some key feature updates that were implemented.
06 Final Outcome
High Fidelity Prototype
Next Steps
More Research!
01 Feedback
Users reported the feedback option as the most useful feature during concept testing. I’d like to be able to see design build this feature out and test it with users.
03 Usability Testing
With such a tight timeline, we were only able to conduct one round of usability testing. I would like to conduct a few more rounds of testing on the current prototype.
Reflection
🔑 Collaboration is Key
⚖️ It’s a balancing act
Being able to balance the stakeholders' interests, research needs and time constraints is a balancing act. We were able to advocate for discovery research but also had to compromise. We divided our time equally between generative and evaluative research in order to reach our deadline.
02 Connecting with Collaborators
A user flow we didn’t get to address was how users could find and connect with collaborators. I would like to continue doing discovery work on how artists form successful collaborations.
02 Jobs to Be Done
We had intended to do a JTBD workshop but ran out of time. I would like to run a workshop so we can better inform the high level strategy across teams.
This project was completely remote and required extra communication across time zones and schedules in order to be successful. This intentional communication helped us function as a well-oiled, cohesive team and allowed us move forward at a rapid pace while making sure we were always on the same page.
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